“those pathological states only come up depending on what social or physical environment people are in” No. The pathological states in stuttering have been observed at rest, in adults and in children. I didn’t say the circuits don’t function, did you read my original comment? Are you suggesting that the biological correlations of stuttering are irreversible? That couldn’t be further from the truth. These observations serve as mechanisms that we can objectively attack and alleviate, and they are grounded in evidence. Furthermore, what you are suggesting is that there is something fundamentally wrong with people who stutter, as people, and that I and people who stutter need to fix ourselves in order to become fluent. How disempowering is that. When I discovered there were biological things happening in the brain, I felt free, I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders and I felt that something wasn’t actually wrong with me as a human being. Not only have I stopped going in circles, but I am now optimistic that there is hope that one day we will be able to address what is going on in stuttering. We will only do so by sticking with the evidence.